


Tech

by CaesariDiffidimus



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Abuse, Clint Barton Is a Good Bro, Dark Tony, Gen, Hurt Loki (Marvel), Hurt/Comfort, Loki Needs a Hug, Mixed POV, Physical Abuse, Tony Stark Has Issues, Whump, pseudo dark tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26994682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaesariDiffidimus/pseuds/CaesariDiffidimus
Summary: Loki is an established resident at Avengers Compound. Loki makes something explode, it hurts someone, Tony gets STUPID pissed. Physical and verbal abuse ensues. Clint provides the comfort (shocking, I know. It was almost Steve but I figured Clint would see the hidden signs of secreted abuse, and feel empathy, more readily than any other character).
Comments: 3
Kudos: 68





	Tech

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one shot, I briefly imagined the explosion and abuse bit and everything else (the little there is) was created just so I could write that part lol. 
> 
> I wasn’t entirely happy with the end, or Clint’s dialogue but whatever—it is what it is.
> 
> Sorry to anyone who was reading my other Loki fic. I had multiple chapters done on my laptop and the laptop died and i could retrieve nothing aaaaand it ruined my inspiration and mojo for that fic. I still love it though so I’ll try to get back into it.

Loki sat hunched over the kitchen counter, slumped on the stool, his foot wiggling anxiously. He was working on some sort of circuit board, he hadn’t told anyone in the kitchen or living area what it was—he hadn’t spoken at all when they entered, and he looked too focused to be interrupted. Steve had watched him periodically, wondering what he was doing, how he could be so enthralled with something no one else understood; he and Tony shared that eccentric characteristic. Though unlike Tony who liked to share at great lengths everything he knew that no one else understood, Loki never talked about what he did, or what he was interested in. In fact he looked taken aback when anyone talked to him at all.

Speaking of the devil: Tony entered the living area with long determined strides, brow furrowed in thought, his finger and thumb rubbing against each other on either hand. If one did not know Tony they would assume he was distraught, but those who did, knew he was in fact still deep in the thralls of whatever he had going on in his lab downstairs. Assumedly his daily alarm had gone off alerting him that it was lunch time and he _must_ eat—but that did not mean his _mind_ stopped for the midday meal.

Steve couldn’t help the affectionate—if amused—smirk on his face, and glancing at Natasha he saw she too was unable to restrain herself.

Bruce, whom leant near Loki at the counter, pushed his glasses up his nose and raised a hand to Tony in an attempt to get his attention. Tony’s eyebrows rose in response, but before Bruce could say anything of note a fizzling, popping noise cracked through the room and Banner yelped in pain, gripping his arm tightly, stumbling backward into Steve.

Loki’s head shot up, he dropped the circuit board as if it were a searing cast iron pan, and, noticing everyone looking at him, slowly slid from his seat, hands still raised to chest height in mock surrender.

Everyone looked shocked or stunned—or in pain in Bruce’s case—except Tony who for a mid-second looking fiendishly furious. Steve thought he saw the fleeting look but it was gone so quickly that he second guessed himself. Perhaps he saw nothing at all. But Loki saw it—Loki saw it and he knew he saw it and he knew what it meant.

“Jesus fuck, Loki, what the fuck are you doing in here?” Tony scolded through clenched teeth.

Loki swallowed visibly. “I… am I not allowed… I thought I was allowed to-to be in here…?”

Steve’s shoulders dropped as he let out a defeated sigh. “Of course you are…”

Tony waved his arms to signal his interruption. “No, why are you doing that in _here?_ ”

Loki’s face was white; drained of every ounce of blood. His eyes were blown wide, and his mouth moved to form words though none came out. His hands were wringing each other now, anxiously pulling at his fingers.

Tony shook his hands and head as if to emphasize that he was waiting for an answer.

Loki swallowed again. “I was… I didn’t notice any…”

“You didn’t notice anyone was here? How the _fuck_ …” Tony stopped himself, putting a hand up, palm to Loki. “How long have you guys been here? A fucking _hour?_ You didn’t notice for a fucking _hour_ that other people were around you?” The last sentence he said directly to Loki, his hand still loitering in the air threateningly.

“Tony, it’s not a bi…” Steve attempted, taking a single step toward them, though not enough to be between Loki and Tony. Loki afforded him a single glance before his eyes snapped back to Tony.

“In what plain of existence is this not a big deal? He’s at Avengers compound, where the Avengers operate and _live_ — everyone else is on high alert at all times, _as they should be_ , and he can’t even pay attention for a fucking hour? He doesn’t know when people enter a fucking _room_?”

Loki’s chest was tight, his breathing rapid and nearly painful. His pail green eyes flitted across the room, absorbing every expression on every face, cataloguing every reaction.

“Bruce, Jesus, are you alright?” Tony finally asked. Bruce nodded as Steve walked with him to the kitchen sink to look at the flesh wound.

Clint sat with his legs over the armchair he was lounging in, picking at his nails. To anyone but Natasha it looked as though he were intentionally minding his own business; uncaring of what was unfolding, but she knew better. Clint was scrutinizing the entire situation deftly to the point he noticed the fleck of bleach spots on Loki’s shirt that weren’t there this morning indicating he used bleach for a project or laundry at some point today. He also noticed how Loki was visibly shaking, swallowing consecutively like he couldn’t quite get a bite of food down—only he wasn’t eating anything, and if he had, Clint suspected he would be throwing it up right about now.

Tony threw his hands up in mock defeat, gave Loki a stern look, before swiping his hand down his face and sighing. “Just… lets bring your shit downstairs.” His voice was calm, defeated, nearly to the tone he usually spoke in.

Loki’s shoulders dropped minutely before nodding once, gathering the circuit board in his arms and followed an exhausted looking Tony out of the living room.

The group left behind all swapped glances: some wary, some incredulous—some suspicious.

Once the lab door was closed Loki opened his mouth to apologize but before any sound came out Tony turned on him quickly and struck him hard across the face with the back of his hand.

“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?” He struck again. “Every fucking day is some shit with you. Without fail you fuck up everything.” He struck again, this time Loki staggered and Tony grabbed him by the hair at the back of his head, shoved him against the wall to steady him from falling, and struck him several more times across the face in quick succession.

“I’m sorry,” Loki sobbed, his voice shoving helplessly passed the bubbles of blood in his mouth from his lip and nose. He attempted to hold on to the non-offending arm but Tony shook him off violently until he was crumpled on the ground. Loki kept his gaze down, afraid of the disgusted expression he would see above him.

Tony had not always been like this. When Thor first brought Loki, Tony had ignored him as if he did not exist. But then somewhere along the way as time progressed everything Loki said seemed to do set Tony off. Everything he said was stupid, everything he did was wrong, his voice was annoying, his laugh was irritating, his smile was vexing, when he talked to other people like Steve or Dr. Strange, or Wong when they visited the Sanctum Sanctorum—it irritated Tony to no end when he talked with anyone, especially if it was for a long time, and Loki looked anything similar to entertained or, god forbid _happy_.

Perhaps he had thought Loki would always be on the outside of their friend group, and once Loki wasn’t, once people didn’t grimace at his presents, or ignore him as Tony had, he snapped and couldn’t stand it—couldn’t stand that someone he hated, someone _everyone_ should hate, someone who tried to kill him—was being accepted by _his_ friends.

“I can’t even fucking fathom going through every day just fucking up everything all the time. Do you fall out of bed even? Seriously? Do you start the day fucking up? Just right out of the gate you can’t even do _getting out of bed_ correctly?” Tony flexed his hands again and again, pacing a small circle until the energy that hatred supplied him filled up and bubbled over and he stepped forward to grab Loki up by his hair, crushing one of Loki’s hands under his shoe. Loki yelped and whined like a dog, squirming in Tony’s grasp until Tony lifted his foot, though not before grinding the toe in.

Loki held his hand to his chest, flailing to get his feet underneath him as Tony hauled him up by his hair and the front of his shirt.

“I-I’m-I’m sorry, I won’t go in there anymore, I’m sorry Stark, please!” He sobbed, his voice a frail keening sound.

Tony marched him down the narrow passageway between his lab tables and shoved him toward a heaping pile of metallic bits and pieces and boxes of wire and circuit boards with masking-tape labels on them Loki stumbled backward but did not fall. His shoulders hunched and his head dropped and he did everything he could to become smaller, but Tony could still see him, he saw him every time. 

“You wanna fuck around and pretend your good at earths tech shit, go dink around with those, stay the fuck down here _out_ of everyone’s fucking way.”

With that Stark marched out, smacking a box of screws off a table before exiting, leaving three-hundred small screws scattered across the tile flooring.

On his way out he passed a darkly-clad archer leaning nonchalantly against the wall, his arms crossed, and his eyes drooping lazily as if he weren’t at all interested in what he just overheard.

Tony stopped, taken aback for a second that someone had observed his treatment of Loki, but then the mask dropped back over his face and he shrugged. “What the fuck do you care?”

“Didn’t say I did.”

“Then don’t fucking look at me like that,” Tony said as he walked passed him.

Clint pushed himself off the wall, and after running a hand over his exhausted face he straightened up and walked into Tony’s lab. With how he just saw Tony handle Loki he was slightly shocked the man hadn’t locked his new little serf in there to do his Cinderella rendition.

When Loki saw him his shoulders hunched back up toward his ears. Without needing him to look up, Clint could see his face was bloody and the left side was cherry red—that would definitely bruise. “I am sorry about what-what happened to Bruce. I didn’t think… I don’t know why I didn’t know anyone…I _am_ sorry. I wont go up there anymore, I promise,” Loki fumbled over the words quickly as if he was grasping for handfuls of water.

Clint couldn’t tell if Loki was saying this to him intentionally or if he thought Tony had come back into the room. He answered all the same.

“It’s uh… yeah, it’s okay, bud,” he said, rolling screws around the floor with the toe of his shoe, hands stuffed in his pockets. He attempted a single step forward but Loki matched it with a step back, so he stayed where he was, leaning against one of the lab tables in stead.

After a brief moment of thumbing the hem of his shirt nervously, and chewing on his bottom lip, Loki knelt back down over the boxes and started quietly rifle through them. Clint couldn’t tell if he was looking for something specific or just trying to seem busy so that Clint would leave.

“So…” Clint began awkwardly. Loki’s hands froze for a second before continuing their efforts. “Does uh… does he do that a lot?”

Loki glanced up at him briefly, his hands ceasing their search, thumbing whatever piece he had in his hand. “I said I was sorry,” he all but whispered.

Clint frowned. “Um, yup, I heard you, and its fine—Bruce is fine. I wouldn’t even classify the ‘ _wound’_ as a third degree burn. He was just startled mostly, I think. That or… or he’s an absolute bitch with a _low_ pain threshold,” he chuckled, watching Loki’s every expression as he spoke. The god looked worried, anxious—scared.

The slighter man nodded once, sharply, before returning to his technical work.

Clint pulled out his phone and tapped out a short sentence before loudly walking over to Loki, ensuring the other knew he was approaching. Hey knelt down, attempted briefly to make eye contact, and when Loki refused he put his phone in front of Loki so he could read what he’d written.

_“Does he do that often?”_ The text read.

Loki’s eyes darted around for a moment as if looking for a hidden Tony, before settling on the box of wires and boards in front of him. He half-heartedly shrugged before nodding once, slowly.

“You don’t have to do this shit,” Clint said in nearly a whisper, hoping the surveillance wouldn’t pick up his voice. He waved his hand at the boxes of tech. “If you wanna go back upstairs, or to you room I’ll walk with you, k? I know you’re like a badass god, or whatever you guys tell yourselves, but it’s fully okay to not like this situation, and its fully okay to not know what to do, and to feel confused.”

Loki said nothing, neither did he move, nor even blink. Clint could see he was thinking it through, he could see the proverbial cogs working behind his eyes. He knew this was a difficult situation to be in for Loki. They’d had their differences, and when he first came to the compound he will readily admit he was livid—but the guy kind of grows on you in a weird familial way. He would also readily admit that the younger Odinson is _nothing_ like how he was during the invasion. There were times during his— _forced subservience_ —that Clint could distinctly recall Loki doing a 180 from manic dictator to panicked youth afraid of what his brother would do—what his _father_ would do to him. And now seeing how Loki is without the scepter it was relatively easy to make the connection that Loki wasn’t running the show back in 2012. According to Thor Loki was just a kid—which was mind boggling to comprehend. But Thor implied multiple times that he had seen his ‘ _majority_ ’ some years before he was to take the thrown, and Loki was years away from his majority. After extensive googling Clint was informed that historically in European cultures ones ‘ _majority_ ’ usually happened between age 16-22 depending on the culture. Nordic culture was more obscure but seemed to point at 18-20 being the majority. This being the time that they are seen as a man desperate from their parents, their parents no longer held control of them, they were done rearing them, the son was on his own path. Thor was on his own path to being king. Loki was Thor informed them, was still under his mother’s tutelage.

Which made Loki what? Equivalent to 16-19 when he invaded?

Jesus fuck.

Without an answer Clint stood, reaching a hand out to Loki. “Come on, this is stupid, Tony is stupid, just…I don’t know… fuck this, come on.”

Loki finally looked up at him, shock evident in his eyes. After a long couple seconds Loki grabbed his hand tentatively, and was subsequently hauled to his feet.

“We can go to my apartment, I’ll get food.” When Loki did not reply Clint glanced over at him as they walked, exiting the lab. “It’s okay, seriously. This is ok.” He knocked shoulders with Loki when they got into the elevator. “You’re okay.”


End file.
